Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769-1803 (review)

In this welcome volume, Kimberly Hanger examines the world and culture of colonial Spanish Louisiana’s free blacks, or libres. Her thesis, clearly supported by this detailed study, is that blacks fared considerably better under the Spanish system of slavery than any other; that New Orleans’s free blacks, in particular, “made their greatest advances in terms of demographics, privileges, responsibilities, and social standing” during the Spanish period (p. 12).

Hanger’s work, obviously, joins an old debate. The Frank Tannenbaum-Stanley Elkins school long ago maintained the leniency and humanity of the Spanish system of slavery—relative to the Anglo, North American, or even the French system—but was challenged by a number of critics including, but not limited to, David Brion Davis, Carl N. Degler, and Thomas N. Ingersoll. For the most part, these critics charged that the Tannenbaum thesis was supported by impressionistic evidence and abstractions rather than hard economic proof. Hanger’s primary contribution is to bolster the Tannenbaum-Elkins school through a case study of the Spanish system in New Orleans, most importantly, by employing a combination of cultural-legal traditions and just the kind of hard economic and material evidence called for by critics of the Spanish system. In a broader sense, Hanger’s book serves as a strong blow against the black legend of Spanish colonial cruelty, fortified most typically in descriptions of the barbarity and greed of the original conquistadores. Not surprisingly, the government of Spain recognized the value in Hanger’s work and aided her research with a grant through the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and U.S. Universities. The study began as a thesis, then a dissertation, and finally became a book.

Although New Orleans’s libres did not complete the process of developing a group consciousness under Spanish rule (1769—1803), Hanger stipulates, they did make significant progress toward that end. And in the process, the material and social success of the libres did much to contribute to the prosperity and importance of New Orleans’s lauded antebellum Creoles of Color. The libres, due to lenient Spanish legislation and their own efforts at building prosperity and networks, experienced significant demographic growth, economic success, and involvement in the Spaniards’ most important corporate entities, the church and the military. In five chapters, the author demonstrates how Louisiana slaves gained their freedom, acquired wealth and property, developed commercial, social, and political contacts with whites and other free blacks, and played increasingly important roles in the polity and society. Of integral importance to this process was King Carlos III’s policy of allowing slaves to purchase their freedom as well as the critical free black experience in the colonial militia.

In perhaps one of the clearest examples of the primacy of group self-interest, the reader learns that most of the libres had no problem with the institution of slavery—as long as they, personally, were not the slaves. Hanger relates that most freed blacks, both men and women, actually favored the institution of slavery. Some libres even owned their own slaves. Usually, the libres favored manumission only in those cases where friends or kin were involved.

Hanger is to be particularly congratulated for her mining of extensive primary sources dealing with colonial New Orleans during the Spanish period. Her research relies on a wide variety of sources, many of them previously unused. These include census records, civil, military, and church records, notarial, judicial, and sacramental materials, as well as the minutes of town meetings, correspondence and journals from archives in Louisiana and Spain. In particular, she makes the most of the Spanish propensity to use notarized deeds for virtually any transaction. In her hands, these records shed much light on the economic, social, and cultural world of New Orleans’s free blacks of the late-eighteenth century.